STOP CITY HALL'S RUSHED HOTEL ORDINANCE BEFORE IT RUINS SANTA MONICA!

Santa Monica residents deserve to know what City Hall is trying to rush through.

A major hotel wage and health benefit ordinance has been placed on the City Council agenda with almost no public warning, no meaningful outreach, no independent financial analysis, and no honest discussion about what this could do to Santa Monica’s hotels, workers, residents, and city services.

This is being called an “emergency.”

The real emergency is the lack of transparency.

Santa Monica already implemented the base wage increase as passed by the City of LA. Now the City Council wants to pile on Los Angeles's expanded mandate — a sweeping health benefit requirement on top of the wage increases — adopted as an emergency ordinance, with no community input and no economic analysis.

We don't have to guess at the consequences. A rigorous independent study of Los Angeles hotels where this same ordinance has been in effect documents the real-world damage:

• 6% of hotel jobs already eliminated or at risk, before the largest cost shock even hit
• 14 hotel restaurants closed or expected to close in 2026
• 58% of LA hotels expect to be unprofitable by end of 2026
• Not a single hotel investment transaction occurred in Los Angeles in all of 2025, out of 100+ nationally
• A planned 18-story Hilton expansion was cancelled outright, killing 1,000 construction jobs and 400 permanent hotel positions

But unlike Los Angeles, Santa Monica charges one of the highest hotel tax rates in the state. Our guests are already paying a premium. There is no room to raise rates further without rapidly losing business to Beverly Hills, the South Bay, and Orange County. When that happens, the Transient Occupancy Tax revenue that funds our parks, youth programs, and public safety goes with it.

You cannot protect hotel workers by destroying the hotels that employ them.

Who Is Really Behind This?

Unite Here Local 11 was at Santa Monica City Hall last week lobbying council members and staff to push this ordinance through. Days later, it appeared on the agenda. Six of the seven council members received substantial campaign funding from this same union, including $275,000 funneled into a PAC that swept the 2024 elections.

Those same council members are now voting on a union-driven ordinance that applies exclusively to non-union hotels. Unionized properties are completely exempt.

Any council member who has ever received significant support from Unite Here Local 11, or who has had ex parte communications with union representatives about this ordinance, has an ethical obligation to fully disclose that relationship before Tuesday's vote and to seriously consider recusing themselves.

Tuesday night is about more than an ordinance. It is a test of whether Santa Monica's elected officials serve this community or the outside special-interest union that funded their campaigns.

We Demand the Santa Monica City Council:

• Immediately pull this item from the June 9 agenda and continue the item for at least 60-90 days.
• Commit to a transparent process that puts our community first.
• Conduct genuine outreach to hotel operators, workers, small businesses, and residents before any vote.
• Release an independent economic impact analysis reflecting Santa Monica's actual market conditions, the impact on jobs, employee hours, hotel profitability, tourism, restaurants, local businesses, future hotel investment, and City tax revenue. Stop pretending there is “no financial impact,” as stated in the staff report.
• Require full disclosure of Unite Here's involvement in this ordinance and require every council member to publicly disclose all campaign. contributions, independent expenditures, endorsements, fundraising support, and political support received from Unite Here, its affiliates, PACs, officers, and related committees.

• Require the City Attorney to provide a public conflict and recusal analysis before any vote on this ordinance.

The damage in Los Angeles is not a prediction. It is a warning. Santa Monica deserves better than a rushed backroom deal that hands our local economy to an outside union while our community had no seat at the table.

Workers deserve honesty. Businesses deserve due process. Taxpayers deserve transparency. City services deserve protection. This rushed ordinance must be stopped.

STOP THE RUSHED ORDINANCE. PROTECT LOCAL JOBS. PROTECT SANTA MONICA'S ECONOMY. DEMAND TRANSPARENCY NOW.

Please sign this petition. Show up or call in to the City Council meeting Tuesday night. Make your voice louder than theirs.

Visit savesantamonicahotels.org for additional information.

Sources: Hotel Association of Los Angeles / Project HERO Report, February 2026. Santa Monica Travel & Tourism, 2024.